Students at 25 middle schools and high schools in 13 states
are remotely controlling huge radio-telescope dishes in the
California desert from their classroom computers this fall and
winter.

Their work will aid studies of Jupiter to be made by NASA's
Cassini spacecraft as it flies past that planet. The students are
using telescopes near Barstow, Calif., at the Goldstone tracking
station of the Deep Space Network, which the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory operates for NASA.

Students' monitoring of natural radio-wave emissions from
Jupiter's atmosphere and radiation belts over the next few months
will help with the interpretation of measurements that Cassini
will take during a few days in early January.

"We know that the radio emission from Jupiter's radiation
belts changes over time, and we want to know whether Cassini is
looking on a normal day or an unusual day," said Dr. Scott
Bolton, a physicist at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., and a Cassini
science team member. "The observations the students collect will
be our primary gauge to determine the state of the radiation
belts."

The students' data will also be used to calibrate Cassini's
radio gear for scientific studies to be conducted after the
spacecraft reaches its main destination, Saturn, in 2004.

Courtney Smith, a junior at Redlands East Valley High School
in Redlands, Calif., keyed numbers into a classroom computer one
recent evening as other students clustered around to watch.
Another computer in the room carried a live picture via the
Internet of the 34-meter-diameter (112-foot) dish that Smith's
commands were steering, about 200 kilometers (about 120 miles)
away. She pointed the radio telescope a little to one side of
Jupiter, then did a scan across the disc of the planet while
other students wrote down measurements of radio-wave intensities
the telescope detected at different wavelengths.

The telescope is the Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope,
one of a group of large radio-antenna dishes at the Goldstone
tracking station. This antenna was formerly used for
communications with NASA spacecraft, the main mission of Deep
Space Network stations around the world, but it now is available
for schools' use through a partnership of the JPL, NASA and the
non-profit Lewis Center for Educational Research, in Apple
Valley, Calif. The Lewis Center develops lesson plans and
conducts teacher training to get maximum educational benefit out
of students' use of the telescope. A second 34-meter dish at
Goldstone is also being used by students in the project to
support Cassini.

"I've found that students who participate in this really
show a lot of interest in science, and it whets their appetites,"
said Joe Monaco, Earth sciences teacher for the Redlands
students.

Brian Dansereau, a Redlands East Valley junior writing down
measurements of Jupiter's radio emissions, said he likes the
unpredictablilty of this real research, compared with textbook
learning. "It inspires you to go on and do more in science," he
said.

Other schools participating in the project range from
Sanford Middle School in Opelika, Ala., to University Public
School in Detroit, Mich.

The research helps students understand that visible light is
not the only way to see the universe. "In visible light, we see
Jupiter's atmosphere, its clouds, its Great Red Spot," said Dr.
Michael Klein, manager of the Deep Space Network's science
office. "At some radio frequencies, we see deeper into the
atmosphere and measure its temperature. At longer radio
wavelengths, the students are measuring emissions from the
radiation belt around Jupiter that you can't see with your eyes,
but that is being generated by electrons and protons zipping
around Jupiter at close to the speed of light."

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the
California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, manages Cassini
for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

NOTE TOEDITORS: A list of participating schools and teachers,
with contact numbers, follows this news release.

11/27/00 GW
#2000-119

Students at the following schools are participating in the
Cassini-Jupiter Microwave Observing Campaign by remotely
controlling NASA radio telescopes through the Lewis Center for
Educational Research. Teachers' names and contact numbers are
also listed.